


With Skin Too Tight

by DracoMaleficium



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cross-Generation Relationship, Depression, Hurt/Comfort, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Recovering From Mental Illness, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-04-15 15:45:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4612329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DracoMaleficium/pseuds/DracoMaleficium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Iroh in trouble, Zuko is forced to spend the summer with his uncle's old friend from the military. A journey of self-discovery is the last thing he expects out of this deal, but maybe if all goes well he might end up saving more than just himself. </p><p>That is, if he can deal with all the spiders first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jerkbending](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerkbending/gifts).



> I cannot write a short story. I'm just physically incapable of it. This is yet another example, and it was supposed to be a oneshot but circumstances dictate that I can only share part 1 of 2 for now, I hope you'll forgive me. For the summer jeeko exchange, the prompt in which Zuko is dropped on Jee's doorstep only it turns out Jee is severely depressed and passively suicidal and Zuko's presence ends up saving him. The concept was just too juicy to close in a drabble, especially since it allows me to flip a lot of the tropes I usually play with, so have some long-ass ramblings instead.
> 
> For background, I relied on a lot of what I developed in "Substitute." In a way, this fic is an AU of an Au, if that makes sense. 
> 
> Warnings for heavy themes of mental illness (on both sides of the ship), references to suicide, past abuse and substance abuse, a character being in therapy, exploring sexual identity, characters being Very Flawed and Acting Like Assholes, and - last but not least - spiders. More warnings may turn up for part 2.

Zuko drops both his bags in the hall, smells the air and immediately regrets his choices. Good _God_. Has someone died in here? 

“Hello?” he calls out, taking a few more steps over the tiled floor that looks like it hasn't seen the fluffy end of a mop in half a decade. “Lieutenant Jee? Anyone home?”

Instead of an answer he gets the sound of a toilet flushing and is startled to see the door at the end of the narrow hall open with a creak. A man stands there who logically _must_ be Lieutenant Jee, Zuko should know because he's seen pictures of him before, but what he sees now is almost enough to turn, grab his bags and get right the fuck _out_ of here. Surely Sokka could find a bit of floor for him to sleep on, or maybe Mai and her parents could harbor him for a while, or hell, he could just stay on his own like he'd told Uncle time and time again he could. 

Zuko wasn't expecting rainbows and sunshine in the first place. This is way worse.

“You're the General's kid?” the man asks, leaning on the doorway to what must be the bathroom, and Zuko tries not to scrunch up his face at the knowledge that he obviously hasn't washed his hands.

“His nephew,” he says, squaring his shoulders. “For the record, I told him I don't need a babysitter.”

The man shrugs. “Got a name?”

“Zuko.”

The man smirks. The expression looks faded and like it doesn't quite fit, which admittedly goes well with the green-grayish tinge to his face and the bags under his bloodshot eyes, not to mention the dirty frayed jeans and the stained white t-shirt that looks and smells like it's overdue for a date with the washing machine. 

“Right. Zuko. I remember now. You're the one who wanted to be Simba when you grow up.” 

“He _told_ you that?” Zuko whines, thinking, _The next bus leaves in six hours._ That should give him enough time to get something to eat, wander around town laden with bags and catch a cab back to the coach station, but it's a cold night and it looks like rain...

The man shrugs again. “It's General Iroh. He talked about you lot every chance he got.”

 _Great. Just great._ He is about to spend God knows how long living with a man who's probably heard every single story Uncle has to tell about him as a child.

Uncle has _a fuckload_.

The man's smirk widens. It only makes his eyes look even more tired. “So it looks like the Simba thing didn't work out,” he throws conversationally. “Tough shit.”

“You were supposed to pick me up from the station,” Zuko points out bitterly.

The Lieutenant shrugs and lets the accusation wash right off him. “Fell asleep,” he admits without a hint of remorse. “Seems like you got here just fine on your own, kid.”

“Look, I didn't want to be here,” Zuko snaps, all but ready to stride out the door. 

“So go,” the man says. “You know where the door is. I couldn't care less. I only agreed to take you in out of respect for your uncle, but if you don't want to stay I'm not gonna lock you up. Guest room's to your left. Take it or leave it.”

With that, Lieutenant Jee detaches himself from the doorway, pushes past Zuko and disappears in the smoked-up kitchen slash living room. He is followed by the stench of cigarette smoke and hangover, and Zuko can hear bottles clinking a moment later. 

He stands there, considering, and weighs the pros and cons of riding a coach all night long only to find himself still untethered and stuck in limbo until someone graciously agrees to house him for the foreseeable future. 

Fuck it. Might as well get some sleep before he leaves. 

 

*

 

“There are spiders here,” he hisses into the phone, and feels gratified when Sokka releases a long, high-pitched _ewwwwwwwww._

“How many?”

Zuko scans the guest room carefully and says, “Three.” A skinny Daddy-Long-Legs in the corner of the ceiling right across from the door, a fat one lounging shamelessly smack in the middle of the wall to his right and another long-legged one chilling on the ceiling above the bed. 

Zuko presses himself to the door, just in case. There are no spiders here as far as he can tell.

“Hang on a minute, I'm gonna get rid of them,” he tells Sokka and receives a rousing “GOOD LUCK” in return. 

He puts the phone down on the worn, faded carpet and starts with the fat one on the wall. He traps it carefully in the glass he packed from Uncle's house, slips his ID under it and carries the spider over to the open window to evict it none too gently. He repeats the process with the Daddy-Long-Legs from the ceiling, but the one in the corner proves more intelligent than its friends and scuttles away from impending homelessness, over to another corner where Zuko can't reach. 

Clever bastard.

“I'm gonna get you,” Zuko warns it, moving to pick up the phone again. “I just need a vacuum cleaner and then you're a goner.”

The spider sits in its new corner and stares Zuko down as though it's saying _Just try it, punk_. 

Picking up the phone and calling out to Sokka, Zuko undertakes the intimidating task of surveying his new home. A closer inspection reveals an electric outlet by the bedside table, which is great, but it's _pulled out of the wall_ , so that's a bit less so. There are breadcrumbs on the carpet. The paint over the window frame looks like it's seen better days and the wooden shutters are stuck. The bed, when he sits down on it and gives it an experimental bounce, squeaks like a squirrel having its tail pulled. At this point he half-expects to find bloodstains on the bedding, and is pleasantly surprised to discover that the pillowcase and the sheets, at least, smell clean. 

He catalogues it all, and tells Sokka, “I'm gonna need to give it a proper dusting. And go a round with the vaccuum. It's like this guy hasn't cleaned this place since the 80's.”

“At least you have a project now, yeah?” Sokka says encouragingly. Zuko rolls his eyes. 

“Whatever. I'm gonna go and ask him for the cleaning supplies.”

“Report later and tell me how it goes, Katara's practically jumping out of her skin with worry.”

The mental image is amusing enough that Zuko lets his lips move into a smirk, and he hangs up.

He checks the wardrobe before he goes back out – mostly empty save for some boxes stacked at the bottom and allergy-inducing layers of dust – and gives the long-legged spider a glare for good measure. He stops in the hallway, listening, but the place is silent as much as any place in Queens can be silent, with neighbor voices pushing through the walls and busy street accompaniment wafting in through open windows but nothing from the living room.

That is, until he hears the first snore.

Oh for pity's sake.

Zuko walks over to the living room on soft feet and sure enough, his gracious host sprawls passed out in one of the armchairs, an empty bottle of something that smells revolting dangling from his limp fingers over the floor. So much for the grand tour then. Zuko carefully picks his way around, noting the glass-to-ceiling windows which are actually doors leading out to the overgrown weed infestation a polite optimist may call a garden, the dust, the endless empty takeout boxes, the dirt on the floor, the stains on the kitchen counters...

And a Pride flag, big and stark against the dour walls, hanging over the TV and being probably the only proud thing about this place. This one gives Zuko pause, and he looks over to the sleeping, snoring man with new eyes and an uneasy twist in his gut. Uncle's never mentioned – that. 

But then again, Uncle's never mentioned that the man is an alcoholic, either, and yet evidence lazes about everywhere. Zuko particularly appreciates the stack of bottles piled up by the wall like bowling pins and takes a picture of them to send to Sokka once he finds the wi-fi password. He is rather less appreciative of the smell, and pulls all the windows open to chase it out before he picks up the ashtray from the glass coffee table – there are more cigarette stubs languishing in it than he cares to count – and flicks the contents into the dustbin by the sink.

He tries the fridge next and regrets his choices yet again, because _fuck_ , half the foods in here must be not just past the expiration date but approaching it from the other side. The stench makes Zuko's stomach lurch and he takes a moment to compose himself before grabbing the first plastic bag he can reach and starting on the nauseating task of emptying the fridge of everything that smells wrong. 

By the end of it there's mostly beer bottles and canned goods left, along with some peanut butter and cheese that can still be salvaged. 

Right.

Zuko goes shopping.

 

*

 

He lets himself in through the open front door like he did the first time he came in to find the scene depressingly unchanged: The Lieutenant, comatose in the armchair; Pride flag, a shocking splash of color over the TV; dirt and misery galore, marinating away everywhere else. 

Zuko balances the grocery bags in both arms as he negotiates the living room minefield, and sets them down on the stained counter with an aggressive clatter. 

He doesn't care if he wakes the man or not, at this point. Not when everything about him and the house makes him, all of a sudden, so goddamn angry.

Restless with that itching kind of fury that buzzes insistently just under his skin, he proceeds to perform what has to be the most violent grocery unpacking and stacking in living memory, and then, when the Lieutenant refuses to be roused, he gets started on the bottles littering the place. They clink and clack in protest as he picks them up and chucks them in the trash bag he's bought. The Lieutenant murmurs something irritable in the process, but doesn't stir, so Zuko ignores him and takes the bottles out to the recycling bin on the street corner to mercilessly dump them in, one by one. Similar grim fate awaits the impressive collection of takeout boxes, and once Zuko banishes those, he turns his attention to the sink.

The Lieutenant has a dishwasher, but a quick inspection reveals that it hasn't been emptied, so Zuko locates a washcloth hanging from a rack over the faucet and deals with the disgusting stack of dishes the old-fashioned way. It's more satisfying to find something for his hands to get busy with, anyway, and when he tunnels his attention on furiously scrubbing off too-old dirt he can almost forget why he's here in the first place.

Almost. Worry about Uncle nags and nags at him like a single hair brushing against naked skin, and that's just on top of the boiling pot of everything else. His therapist tells Zuko that he shouldn't rely on anger to weather him through things he doesn't want to deal with, but it's so much easier to do just that and it's been Zuko's go-to solution for too long to just _stop_ , and, anyway, sometimes anger is useful. It gives him the energy to _do_ things, to get his ass in gear and focus on solutions, even small, short-term ones that ultimately won't amount to anything, and he has a feeling that if he's to stay in this miserable dive for the foreseeable future he's gonna need that energy, and a lot of it. 

Otherwise the atmosphere in this house is likely to send him spiralling right back to the clusterfuck he's just barely crawled and clawed his way out of. He can't let that happen. He's worked too hard.

The dishes bear the brunt of his violent track of thought admirably and manage to stay in one piece throghout. By the time he's done Zuko's hands are an angry red from the hot water and the citrusy detergent, but at least the air no longer smells like rot. Zuko stacks the foam-dripping dishes on the rack next to the sink to dry, wipes his tingling hands on the dishcloth hanging over the oven doors, and takes a moment to think. 

“The fuck are you doing?” a gruff, sandy voice asks him from the armchair. The Lieutenant sounds like he's swallowed a fly and is trying to cough it out, and maybe that's not too far from the truth.

“What does it look like I'm doing?” Zuko snaps without turning around. “This place is a pigsty.”

“It's _my_ pigsty,” the Lieutenant protests weakly. 

“Not anymore. If I'm going to stay here there's gonna be some changes. You're welcome.”

“Decided to stay, did you?” The Lieutenant doesn't sound overjoyed. Zuko smirks before turning around and moving to the fridge. 

“Yup. I got us pizza for dinner. Hope you like mushrooms.” He takes out the two pizza boxes from the freezer and puts them on the counter, then moves to fiddle with the oven. It's a pretty basic one and Zuko figures out how to set the timer in no time at all. 

For a moment he feels the lieutenant's eyes on him like a spotlight, and then the man clears his throat. “You went shopping?”

“Yeah.”

“With your own money?”

“I got money from Uncle. He said he sent some to your account too. Didn't he tell you?”

“He did, I just... I didn't really expect you to be so... hands-on. I thought you'd be more...”

“Spoiled?” Zuko lets the oven heat up and leans on the counter to finally look at his host. The Lieutenant looks like he's been captured by a giant, chewed twice over, and than spat back out again, and his expression tells Zuko he probably knows that and doesn't care.

Zuko's heart gives a vicious tug. He swallows over it and looks away. 

“Yeah. Spoiled. Rich kids tend to think housework is beneath them.”

“It's been a while since I believed that,” Zuko says as he gets to opening the pizza boxes. He won't tell this wreck of a man anything else. For one thing, he doesn't want to, and besides just looking at him spikes Zuko full of defensive rage. 

He could have ended up like that. Came way too close. Never again.

“There's a microwave,” the Lieutenant says after a moment.

“I noticed.”

“You cleaned up the bottles?”

“And the rest of the trash. Yeah.”

“There was beer in the fridge.”

“It's still there.”

“Oh. Good.” There's a thoughtful kind of silence. “You want some?”

Zuko rolls his eyes. “No, and you won't be having any more tonight either, Lieutenant. I've had enough of your snoring as it is.”

“Now wait just a second.” From the sound of it, the Lieutenant's indignation is finally pushing him to his feet, and Zuko snorts softly. He'll remember that for the future. “I took you in because I owe everything I have to your uncle and frankly having so much emotional debt hanging over my head is damned annoying. But let's make some things crystal fucking clear. You can do whatever the hell you want while you're here, but you will _not_ tell me how to behave in my own house.”

“Are you quite finished?” Zuko asks, looking up and into his eyes. “Because I want to add some rules of my own. Here,” he points to one of the bags on the counter, “are new cleaning supplies. I will not be the only one to use them. Let's keep this room livable.”

“You little –”

“And if you're gonna smoke, kindly do it outside or in your own bedroom. I'm an athlete and I'm young and I really don't fancy dying from second-hand smoke. We can either take turns cooking and doing the dishes or we can eat separately, it's all the same to me. I need a working outlet in my bedroom and the wifi password.” He pauses, seized by a horrible suspicion. “You do have wifi, don't you?”

The Lieutenant stares at him long and hard from under thunderous eyebrows. Zuko stares right back. The Lieutenant eventually sits back down in the armchair, still holding eye-contact, and then slowly fishes around in his jean pocket, takes out a cigarette pack and a lighter, selects a single cigarette, puts it in his mouth and lights it.

Zuko's face doesn't twitch. He is very careful that it doesn't. He turns to the sink, selects a glass among the freshly-washed dishes and puts it under the faucet to fill it with cold water. Then, he turns back to the Lieutenant, walks around the counter and towards the armchair, and lifts the glass as if to drink from it.

He is still holding the Lieutenant's challenging gaze as he pours the water all over the man's face, his shirt and the lonely pathetic cigarette. 

“Oops,” he says. 

The beep from the oven pushes into the heated stand-off that follows. Zuko turns away to put in the pizzas, and a moment later he can hear cursing, rustles of fabric and angry stomping. The door slams so hard the glass shakes, and Zuko heaves out a long, long breath, closing his eyes for a moment.

Well. It could have been worse, maybe, but it also could have gone a lot, lot better.

He stands there for a moment looking at the pizzas, then grabs one of the lieutenant's beers from the fridge and throws himself into the other armchair. His limbs feel heavy and so does his head, weighed down and throbbing with prickling emotion. He's worked himself up. He's let this man trip and unbalance him. It shouldn't have happened.

He puts the unopened beer can on the coffee table, presses his hands to his face and closes his eyes, sitting back and breathing like his therapist taught him to. It doesn't help much, but it does help a tiny bit, especially in the sleepy silence of the house; so after a moment, when he feels his heart beginning to slow down, he gets up and ventures to the guest room to retrieve his phone and laptop with chargers. A quick hunt around the living room yields working outlets, which he uses to charge both devices, and he sits back down in the armchair with a phone in one hand and beer in the other.

His hand only shakes a little bit when he selects Uncle's number and waits three signals, and some of the tension in his head flakes away when Uncle's warm, warm voice sounds in the speaker.

“Hello, nephew. How was your trip?”

“Nevermind that,” Zuko whispers. “How are you holding up? Do you have any news?”

“No news,” Uncle says with a sigh that sits heavy on Zuko's shoulders. “I have an appointment with my lawyer tomorrow. She sounds like a smart, competent woman so I should be in good hands.”

“I hope so. Please keep me updated.”

“Of course, Zuko, but don't you worry about me. This old fox still has a few tricks up his sleeve. I've been in worse trouble before and I've always come out on top.”

“I know, Uncle. I just wish you didn't have to deal with any of it in the first place.”

“There will always be people wishing us harm,” Uncle says quietly. “The most important thing is that you believe in me.”

“Of course I do,” Zuko manages through the lump in his throat. His eyes feel hot, and only part of it is exhaustion. “I know you'd never do what they say you did. Ozai would. Not you.”

For a moment, Uncle is silent, and Zuko takes this opportunity to sneak in a sip of the beer. It tastes, predictably, like piss. Zuko drinks some more.

“Thank you, Zuko,” Uncle says at length, and Zuko smiles weakly into the phone. “Now, tell me. What do you think of the good Lieutenant? Is he here with you?”

Zuko almost chokes on the beer and has to put the can away for a moment as he furiously scrambles to come up with something to say that won't freak Uncle out too much. “He's... not what I expected,” he decides in the end. “But that's all right. I'm mostly going to be spending my time out in town anyway.”

“Don't rile him up too much, my nephew. Is he there? May I talk to him?”

“Uh, he's out,” Zuko says, gazing out at the closed front door. “Maybe some other time.”

“Very well. Please give him my best and let him know I'd like him to call me. I want to thank him personally and talk over a few more things.”

“Sure, Uncle.” _If I manage to catch him when he's conscious._

“And send me pictures! You know it does my old heart good.”

Zuko tries to imagine what kind of pictures of his new bedroom he could possibly send Uncle that could do his old heart _any_ good, and diplomatically stays silent on the matter. He's already resolved to spend the next day making it livable, so maybe he could take some pictures then.

“Take care of yourself,” he tells Uncle instead. 

“Don't worry about me, Zuko. Go and make yourself at home. We'll be together again in no time.”

Zuko closes his eyes and exhales loudly. “Sure. I'll call again tomorrow night.”

“I'll be waiting. Good night, nephew.”

“Night, Uncle. I love you.”

The call ends with Zuko's heart climbing up to his mouth, and it takes a few swallows to force it down again. It's easy to tell Uncle he loves him, now, when only months ago it felt impossible. That's progress, he supposes. Or maybe it's the worry. It's easier to tell someone he loves them when it feels like he's about to lose them. 

But it won't come to that. Uncle will be fine. He always is. 

Zuko gives himself a few more minutes before he makes his next call, and then Sokka immediately puts him on loudspeaker. Suddenly Zuko is assaulted by a torrent of questions from him, Katara, Aang, Suki and Toph, and his smile grows just as the warm ache in his heart does. He knows why Uncle sent him a long way away for the duration of the investigation, but fuck, he misses them all, and is breathless to realize how much. 

He talks to his friends until the pizzas bing with readiness and the sky outside spills into black, and then he relocates to the guest room and spends the rest of the evening eating his dinner and watching Pixar movies in bed. Occasionally he glances at the corner which harbored the long-legged spider, but it's empty now, and Zuko goes to bed half-expecting to feel the little menace walking all over his face as soon as he lets his guard down.

He listens for other noises as he lies there waiting for sleep, but Lieutenant Jee doesn't return. Not until he startles Zuko awake at 4:50 in the morning with some muffled swearing and stumbling in the hall.

Zuko listens to him for a bit, disoriented, then simply turns onto his stomach and goes right back to sleep before he gets too angry.

When he wakes up again some time later in a pool of shredded sunlight, the house is, once again, empty.

 

*

 

The other pizza sits in the fridge under protective foil just as Zuko left it, untouched. Zuko glares at it for a good while before he grabs some eggs from the fridge and slams the door shut. At least the stench of cigarettes seems to have been guilted into dispersing, if not entirely then enough for the air in the living room to be breathable, and Zuko makes himself french toasts with music playing from his phone, feeling a bit more optimistic about the whole deal. The silence in the house feels a bit passive-aggressive, but he can live with it. Anyway, it's Monday and the Lieutenant is probably off to wherever it is he works when he's not slouching around the house. 

Zuko eats his breakfast and takes a second long look around the place, and his eyes, when they're not inspecting various framed photographs stood on any available flat surfaces, keep straying to the flag which still reigns silently over the room. He can't help staring at it. It's garish and provocative among the washed-up greys and browns of the rest of the house, and perhaps it was meant to infuse some rebellious life and color into it once upon a time but seems to instead slowly give in to the onslaught of the grim and mundane. Zuko can't explain it, but the contrast, rather than inspiring the joy and pride the flag is meant to evoke, makes him feel a peculiar kind of sadness, though the colors stand firm and strong as if trying to make a point. Maybe they are. Maybe the lieutenant is – or was, once upon a time, and just can't be bothered to take it down now. Zuko doesn't know which of the two is sadder.

Or maybe he's just being a judgmental brat and his defensiveness is coloring his reactions. Zuko knows himself well enough to know it's likely. 

Now that he looks at the flag more closely in startling bright daylight, he can see some dark smudges scattered around it, haphazardly, here and there. Curious, he fixes himself a glass of orange juice and once he's done with his toast, he walks up to the flag, peering closely at what at close range appear to be signatures. He can't quite make them out without his glasses though and has to admit defeat for the time being. He'll go back to snooping some other time, when he can actually read anything and make out the faces in the framed photographs.

For now, he has a busy day ahead of him.

He puts off showering and goes for a scavenger hunt around the house, and emerges triumphant with a mop and a vacuum cleaner, which he promptly puts to good use. Buoyed by that itching restless energy the house seems to insist on sparking in him, Zuko starts on the wardrobe, dusting each shelf with gusto and then moving on to other flat surfaces in the guest room before he treats the cheap ikea carpet to rhythmic swipes of the vacuum, phone spurring him on with his workout playlist. Once he's done with the dusting, he targets the window, washing it from both sides and not sparing the sill or the flaking white frame. The wooden shutters give him a bit of a hard time and resist his attempts at mending them, so he foregoes them for the time being in favor of finally unpacking his clothes and carefully putting them in the newly-cleaned wardrobe. 

The corner spider reveals itself only after he's already put the vacuum cleaner away. Zuko glares at it before grabbing a towel and his toiletries and heading off to the bathroom for a well-deserved shower. He'll deal with that smug little bastard later.

Of course, then he has to confront the bathroom and decides _it_ needs to be brought up to snuff too. He puts that on his to-do list for this week. It's gone past noon now and his stomach is grumbling something fierce, and anyway, Zuko's in Queens, only a subway ride away from the best New York City has to offer. He'll be damned if he spends the entire day cooped up inside doing housework when he could be out there, mapping out all the places he used to visit with his family as a kid. 

Which, he knows, is going to be bittersweet. But he thinks he's ready now. Maybe.

He only finds the spare keys and a strip of paper with some random numbers on it that, he hopes, is the wifi passoword, waiting for him tucked behind the mirror in the hall when he's all but ready to go. He grabs both and slips them into his pockets, and locks the door behind him when he goes out into brilliant hot sunshine to join the bustling afternoon traffic. 

He stands there for a moment, breathing in the unmistakable atmosphere of a big city, before marching off in the direction of the corner store. The man behind the counter looks at him with deep suspicion like he did the day before, like he's trying very hard not to ask what Zuko's doing in _his_ neighborhood, so Zuko doesn't engage and simply pays for his hotdog and dashes back out. Sunglasses on and eyes still squinting behind them, Zuko negotiates the hurrying crowd and bears people pushing and shoving past him without complaint because he knows full well it's gonna get so much worse once he actually reaches Manhattan. Still, the itching under his skin changes the further he gets from the Lieutenant's home, and by the time he catches line R heading downtown his mind buzzes with more genuine excitement than nerves – just as restless, just as vaguely nauseating, but for entirely different reasons. Zuko has to keep his hand firmly on his knee for the entire ride to stop his leg shaking. Once he gets out on 42nd Street and is hit full force with the blazing glory of the Theater District, he needs a moment just to catch his breath again because suddenly it's knocked right out of him.

Okay. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to start his tour here. He can already feel sensory overload coming on strong, and something vice-tight is gripping his throat, and he can practically see a much smaller version of himself holding onto Mom's hand from one side while Azula marches stubbornly on her own on the other, three ghosts wound into the giant moving mass of people. 

It's scary, how long it's been. How much he's different from that little boy, now. How much he still longs to curl his fingers around his mother's slender wrist and tug her on towards one of the gaudy, inviting theaters. 

For a moment the longing is so fierce it tingles all over his right hand and spreads all the way up to his eyes. Zuko has to blink and wipe them furiously before he tries to settle his breath like he's been taught, and then he quietly counts to thirty, standing to the side to avoid being jostled by the crowds hurrying to and from the station. 

Well, he's here now. That time is well and truly gone. Might as well get on with it and throw himself to the wolves because it's not like he has anything to lose, and it's not like anyone here is going to hold his hand and walk him through it.

Zuko blinks up at the violent ad lights, puts on his headphones, plays his music and lets the city seduce him.

 

*

 

It's going on eleven when he tries the door to Lieutenant Jee's home and, once again, finds it open. Does this guy never worry about being robbed?

Zuko steps inside, the glow of sunshine still hot on his skin, head swimming with sounds and smells and images. He's exhausted and reeling from too much of everything, but mostly it's the good kind of exhaustion, the kind that, once he can get a few minutes to shush his swirling thoughts, means he'll sleep easily and without any dreams that he can remember in the morning. It's the best kind of sleep he can hope for. 

“You're still alive, I see,” a gruff voice addresses him from the living room. 

Zuko pauses on the way to the guest room. “Yeah.” He sniffs the air and pulls a face, because for God's sake. “You're smoking in the living room again, Lieutenant?”

“I am,” the voice answers him, coarse and dripping with obnoxiously fake cheer. “In my living room. In my house, where I can do what I want.”

Right. Obviously this means war, but Zuko is too tired to devise strategies now so he puts it off till tomorrow and only throws, “Uncle wanted to talk to you” at the lieutenant before shutting himself in his bedroom. 

So it was a little guilt-trippy. Whatever. That guy deserves it. 

Zuko spends the next fifteen minutes on the phone, listening to Uncle gush about his new lawyer – _So competent, Zuko, and so charming, she praised my tea most generously_ – and then texting his friends as he tries to flush Manhattan and his re-emerging irritation out of his head. 

It doesn't quite work, and he lies awake in the darkness for a while drifting between sleep and consciousness, listening to sirens and street arguments and random bursts of laughter. When sleep finally does come, it arrives on a cloud of swirling, throbbing noise and color and lights all mixed up with one another to pull him under, and he does dream, he thinks. Probably.

He wouldn't have woken up with tears streaking down his face otherwise.

 

*

 

He doesn't see Lieutenant Jee all that much over the next two weeks. They seem to pass each other by unspoken agreement, coming and going in turns, and that's absolutely fine by Zuko. It gives him all the time he needs to hide all the ashtrays and cigarette packs he finds around the house, and sure, the Lieutenant can just buy more, but Zuko makes sure to do a thorough sweep each day and hides any new bounty he comes across, and for a few days at least the living room doesn't stink. 

Of course, the smoking is only part of the problem as much as he's aware, but no matter how it makes him feel, he doesn't want to involve himself in the drinking. He hates coming home each night to find the Lieutenant in the armchair already deep into his stubborn boozing, but the man doesn't give him any openings to intervene by being loud or violent – if anything, he is eerily quiet, sitting there morose and frowning into the distance as he downs glass after glass with almost deliberate determination – and Zuko doesn't know what to do with that or even if he wants to do anything. 

How do you act around the man who seems hell-bent on drinking himself to an early grave, if you've just crawled out of a similar pit yourself?

For Zuko, the answer for now is: you avoid him. And in New York, avoiding anyone is laughably easy.

He gets up early each morning and goes for a long run around the neighborhood and beyond, music in his ears and sweat breaking out on his skin while the city struggles out of its patina of morning mists. By the time he gets back, the house is already empty, and he makes himself breakfast, takes his meds and does whatever chore he's assigned himself for the day. He cleans the bathroom, the hall, the living room once again, and is quietly grateful that the house only has the one floor to look after. 

Well, that and the garden, which seems to mock him every time he glances out the windows. He'll have to do something about that too, eventually. Maybe the Lieutenant has some gardening tools stashed away somewhere. 

He stays well clear of the man's own bedroom. Even he can recognize that certain boundaries are better left uncrossed. 

When he's not cleaning, he's out reclaiming New York City for himself. Day after day it gets just a little bit easier to walk down the familiar streets without having to constantly ward off unhelpful memories, and the city encourages him to lose himself, luring him in with museums and stores and noisy docks, and blinding billboards promising untold delights if only he's willing to shell out a hundred bucks for a ticket. He sits on the grass in Central Park and watches the ducks; he takes a ferry ride around the island; he visits the tourist traps and takes long walks in the less frequented areas. It doesn't take long for the shows to siren-call him into blowing a good portion of his savings on a last-minute matinee ticket, and he spends a bittersweet afternoon swept away by the joyous, larger than life spectacle of _Aladdin_ after which the world outside looks just a little bit mangier than usual. 

Through this excitement, though, a part of him half-expects to run into Azula or pass Father's limo even though he tries to avoid Wall Street and the adjacent areas. Nothing like that happens, though, and with any luck they're spending the summer somewhere else anyway. Zuko feels anonymous in the crowd, scar hidden behind his hair and sunglasses, and that's good. That means he can do whatever he likes.

Even go to a gay bar, if he lies about his age convincingly enough, not that he feels ready to try it just yet. But he _can_. That's the whole point. 

Mai laughs at him when he tells her that. Sokka is supportive and encourages him to find himself a “a hairy manly stud,” making Zuko instantly regret telling Sokka _anything_ about his possible tastes. Katara reminds him to be careful and to use protection and Suki is ready with recommendations and links to the best-ranked places in New York five minutes into the conversation. 

Zuko grins so hard his face hurts and aches with missing them all.

It's Aang, though, who unwittingly sets things in motion when he suggests, “How about you ask your lieutenant guy to recommend you places? He should know, shouldn't he?”

And Zuko is so utterly floored by the idea he opens and closes his mouth several times, stupidly, and glances at the corner spider helplessly. He's pretty sure the spider is judging him.

“I don't know, Aang,” Zuko mutters at length. “He's not... He isn't very talkative.”

“Well, neither are you,” Aang points out with his signature cheeriness. “And here you are talking to all of us about wanting to go to a gay bar.”

“I never said I _wanted_ to go, I just –”

“Save the denial for people who care,” Toph interrupts. “I think Twinkletoes here is on the money. And by the way, and completely unrelated, I seem to recall you telling Sokka that you thought this guy was quite a stud himself, last month.”

Zuko's mouth falls open. “How did you even... I mean... That was a private conversation!”

“Conversations carried out in any room in a house I happen to be in are never private,” Toph proclaims. “Especially not interesting clandestine conversations in kitchens about your taste in big manly men. Deal with it.”

Thunderous laughter spills out from the other side of the connection. Zuko wonders if Uncle would forgive him if he decided to duck under the bed and never emerge into the outside world ever again.

“Just kill me,” he whines into the phone, which does nothing to calm his friends down. 

“But that only makes it better,” Aang insists, voice bright and happy. “I mean, if you already think he's attractive...”

“I _thought_ he was attractive, Aang, after Uncle showed me a picture of him in uniform that must have been taken, like, ten years ago,” Zuko clarifies, keeping his voice down. He's pretty sure he's still alone in the house with the Lieutenant off at work, but he knows his bad luck well enough to half-expect the man to barge in on him with a hurt expression and angry words. 

“Let himself go, did he?” Suki asks softly. 

Zuko sighs and fixes his gaze on the corner spider. “You could say that.”

“That's sad,” Katara opines. Zuko can only agree. It is, and he doesn't want to think about it. 

“Well, you can still ask him for advice and recommendations,” Aang insists. “It can't hurt to try.”

Zuko isn't all that sure. His brief exchanges with the man have all been rather on the hostile side, and neither of them has made any effort to break the ice. It's hard to even try when just looking at the guy pricks Zuko with irrational bone-deep anger. 

He thinks about the Pride flag, though, and about the signatures he still hasn't tried to decipher, and about the man he remembers from Uncle's picture, proud and smiling, impressively handsome in his crisp uniform. His stomach drops and twists uncomfortably, and he picks at the fabric of his jeans, glancing around the room he's managed to made as inviting and cosy as it can get.

Lieutenant Jee used to be Uncle's friend, he recalls. And that only tugs the knot in his stomach tighter.

“I guess I could try,” he muses aloud into the thoughtful silence that seems to settle on both sides of the connection. “Not that I want to go to any gay bars. Because I don't. Stop laughing,” he sighs into the phone when his declaration is met with more merriment. He loves them, he really does, but sometimes the love manifests itself by an overwhelming urge to chuck them all into the Hudson. 

“He could have some sage advice to impart,” Sokka speculates, sounding entirely too amused. “What to wear to parades. How to get into leathers. Which glory holes to avoid. That kind of thing.”

“Please stop talking.”

“Yeah, I'm with Zuko on that one,” Katara agrees. “Zuko, you're an adult and of course you can do whatever you want but please promise me you won't go anywhere near any glory holes.”

“Why don't you send him a pack of condoms while you're at it, mom,” Toph teases her, and Zuko smiles when he imagines Katara's eyeroll. 

“I'm hanging up now,” Zuko tells them, amping up the crankiness for their entertainment. “You're all terrible and we're no longer friends.”

“We love you too, Zuko,” multiple warm, amused voices assure him, and when he hangs up he sighs and flicks his gaze once again to the Daddy-Long-Legs doing its zen hanging thing in the corner.

“Not a single word,” he tells it. 

The spider continues to hang there easy as you please, and once again Zuko has the uncomfortable impression of being judged and found wanting by a _pholcus phalangioides_. 

“I'm still vacuuming you out of here,” he threatens when he grabs his reading glasses and leaves the bedroom to the mercy of his temporary arachnid roommate. 

It's a rainy day, grey and heavy with dark clouds that bear down on the city without leaving a single tear through which slivers of blue sky might peek, and Zuko thinks he's fine with it. He could use a quiet day in after all the excitement. And not just to – well, to snoop. Because that's what he's about to do. He's about to go snooping. 

He only feels a touch guilty about this when he walks into the living room with his glasses on and goes straight for the flag. Rain patters against the glass doors to the garden as he peers up at the signatures, which now sharpen into something he can vaguely make out. Names, mostly, scrawled carelessly as though in a hurry, and a few faded dedications still legible against the fabric – _Take care you dirty motherfucker_ , _Give them hell_ , _May your beer fridge always be stocked_ and a small one in a corner that gives Zuko pause: _You're not the bad guy, J._. 

He stares at the last one a bit longer, wondering, before he moves on.

There's nothing wrong with looking at the pictures, he tells himself as he starts on a slow circuit around the living room. They're right there on display. If the Lieutenant didn't want Zuko looking at them, he'd have hidden them away. They don't seem very personal, anyway, just some people Zuko doesn't know, smiling into the camera with the Lieutenant – brighter, happier, maybe younger – standing among them. There's one of him kneeling on the grass next to a handsome big German shepherd – Zuko wonders what happened to the dog, if it belonged to the man – and one of a rather striking young man somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, lying on a golden sun-soaked beach, flashing the camera an exasperated smile as he shields his eyes from the blinding sun. The picture seems so natural, so carefree and joyful Zuko finds himself smiling back at the stranger without realizing it, and then he briefly wonders if this man used to be the Lieutenant's boyfriend. 

Or is, maybe. But that seems more than a little doubtful, and the thought is sad. Zuko puts the frame down on the shelf and moves to the kitchen.

They got off on the wrong foot and though Zuko doesn't want to assume sole responsibility for it, he does admit that he was, to put it mildly, a brat. It's an issue. He's been slowly getting better at managing his responses, but it's an uphill battle and the atmosphere in this house – this pervading sense of hopelessness, ruin and _giving up_ – hits way too close to home. He let it crawl under his skin and coax out his old protective impulses, and the results have been... less than stellar.

Well, he thinks, maybe he can make up for it.

He wonders if the Lieutenant likes steak.

 

*

 

The irresistible, juicy smell of roasting meat and gravy sauce is reigning proud and true in the house by the time Zuko hears the door open. He doesn't turn away from the pot and stirs the thick brown sauce, though in his stomach something definitely jolts in excitement.

Nothing could come of it. Nothing probably _will_. But even so, no one will be able to accuse Zuko of not trying.

“Dinner's almost ready,” he calls in what he hopes is casual voice. “It's steak. I assumed you'd be okay with medium rare.”

For a moment, nothing answers him but the enthusiastic bubbling in the pot. 

“What's all this?” the man asks finally.

“I'm making dinner,” Zuko says. “Sit down, Lieutenant, it's almost done.”

Again, there is silence. After a minute or so Zuko can hear the man moving to the living room, reluctantly, and sitting on the barstool by the counter. The silence after that is pointed with questions and Zuko smiles as he peeks into the oven.

“Why would you cook for me?” the Lieutenant asks suspiciously. “Is there arsenic in the gravy?”

Zuko rolls his eyes as he turns the knob to kill the gas under the potatoes. “The entire pot. Nothing but arsenic. Because our family isn't having quite enough legal trouble.”

He starts scooping up two generous helpings of mashed potatoes onto a pair of simple white plates, then turns off the oven and searches for the blue kitchen mittens he'd rescued from one of the dusty cupboards. 

And then is quite surprised when the Lieutenant mutters, almost reluctantly, “Sorry 'bout the whole thing with your Uncle, kid.”

Zuko stills in the middle of pulling the steaks out of the oven. “Thanks,” he says, and puts the meat on the plates and then bathes the whole thing in gravy.

He doesn't quite manage a smile when he puts the two plates and the bowl with the vegetable salad on the counter, but that's all right because the Lieutenant isn't looking at him anyway. 

Well. Awkward silence just couldn't be avoided in this situation. Zuko sits down to his meal resigned to have most of it in this tense, simmering air of vague mutual hostility, and almost lets out a bitter laugh when the Lieutenant actually goes to the trouble of complimenting the food.

“It's good,” he says, almost surprised. 

“Uncle taught me to cook,” Zuko explains, trying not to bristle and sounding testy anyway. “You don't need to look so surprised.”

“I am though,” the Lieutenant says simply. “I still don't get why you'd even cook for me in the first place.”

“Well,” Zuko mumbles, and buys some time by slicing off a big chunk of the fragrant gravy-soaked meat. “I guess it's a thank you for not smoking in the living room?” he tries, because admitting straight-up that it's a peace offering would have been a bit too awkward even for him.

“You tryin' to condition me?” The Lieutenant accuses, chewing on the meat. One of his eyebrows goes up and his face looks so comically unimpressed for a moment that Zuko almost chokes on his mouthful. 

“Maybe,” he allows coyly once he regains control of his face. “Is it working?”

“Hmmmmpf,” the Lieutenant goes, like a proper response is beneath his dignity, and keeps eating his meat with mash, ignoring the vegetables entirely.

Zuko watches his face for a moment, fork idly playing with the vegetables on his own plate, and is struck by an unhelpful memory of the photograph Uncle had showed him before arranging this whole thing. The man in it really was quite handsome, and now that Zuko is looking a bit closer and the Lieutenant isn't passed out drunk, he can see traces of the photograph in his face. Not a whole lot because it's hidden behind what seems like years of baggage, but... 

He looks away and stuffs salad into his mouth.

“You should have some of that,” he says before he can bite his own tongue, pointing to the salad bowl.

The Lieutenant sighs. “And here I thought you might stop babying me.”

“Well, it's good for you,” Zuko says defensively, heat rising in his cheeks. “Especially with a meal like this.”

“Which _you_ cooked, smartass.”

“Yeah, because you looked like a steak kind of guy and I thought you'd like it, but – ”

“How's your Uncle?” The Lieutenant asks sharply, shutting down the topic of vegetables with some decisiveness. “He only told me the basics.”

“He has a good lawyer,” Zuko says, conceding defeat for now. “This Jun lady seems to know what she's doing. He's pretty confident he'll win the case.”

“But he was arrested?”

“Only for a day before we paid the bail. They set it pretty high but I have access to Uncle's funds now so...”

“That's good,” the Lieutenant says softly. A line of concern shoots across his forehead. “A man his age shouldn't have to put up with any of it.”

“He was okay when he got out,” Zuko explains. “He's strong. Said they gave him his own cell and he napped most of the time. But... yeah, I agree.” The thought of Uncle locked up drove him to very nearly walk on walls with anxiety – he didn't sleep a wink that night. 

“So what are his chances?”

“He didn't do it,” Zuko says immediately, gripping his fork tight. 

“Relax, kid,” the Lieutenant mutters. “I know _that_. Anyone who knows your Uncle at all knows that he would never embezzle anything. Proving that, though... if the prosecution has it in for him, that might not be so easy.”

“It'll be all right. Uncle is innocent and he has the paperwork to prove it. It's just a matter of sorting through it and, well... hiring the better lawyer.” 

“And how is that going?”

Zuko takes another bite and shrugs. “He doesn't tell me much, only that things are okay and not to worry. They're taking care of it.”

The Lieutenant nods and seems to consider it, and doesn't ask any more questions. Zuko itches with the need to ask some of his own, but holds them back. He wouldn't know how to phrase them anyway. Better to quit while you're ahead.

He counts it as a personal victory when, having eaten his steak and mash, the Lieutenant eyes the salad bowl with some defeatism and, sighing heavily, serves himself a spoonful. And then things get even better, because the man takes out his pack of cigarettes, gives Zuko a long, resigned look, and drags himself out into the garden to stand under the roof and smoke away into the rain.

He doesn't go so far as to offer help with the clean-up, but Zuko supposes Rome wasn't built in a day. He loads the dishwasher and cleans the pots and pans without complaint. Progress is progress, no matter how tiny, is what his therapist always says, and Zuko intends to learn his lessons.

 

*

 

“I've been thinking,” Zuko says the next Saturday morning over breakfast cereal. “We should do something with the garden.”

The Lieutenant grunts something non-commital as he sits in his favorite armchair and stares at his newspaper, pretending to read it. He hasn't actually turned a page in five minutes. Zuko knows. He's been counting.

“Do you have a lawn mower? Any tools?” he asks.

“There's some junk in the basement. The mower's in the garage. Knock yourself out.”

“You're not going to help?”

Another grunt says no, the Lieutenant's not going to help.

“Fine. Can you drive me to the nearest Home Depot to get garden stuff?”

“What garden stuff?” The Lieutenant demands, twisting in his chair so he can send Zuko something that's not quite a glare _yet_ , but can definitely turn into one soon. 

Zuko shrugs. “I don't know. Stuff to make it look nicer. Pots, seeds, plants, kind of thing.”

“No use.” The man goes back to his newspaper. “You won't manage to get rid of the weeds and I'm not gonna maintain it when you're gone. Don't bother.”

Familiar heat pools aggressively in Zuko's belly. Milk splashes when he finishes off the cereal. “I'm just trying to help,” he says, sounding petulant even to his own ears.

“You can do whatever you like,” the Lieutenant says. “I'm just saying there's no use going all out. I'm not a gardener and I don't really care about this stuff.”

“Well, what if someone comes over and you wanna sit in the sun, or what if you wanna throw a barbeque?” Zuko insists.

The Lieutenant snorts. “In case you haven't noticed, kid, this isn't exactly party central.”

“And you want to keep it that way?”

“Sure. One less thing to worry about.”

Zuko feels the angry bile rise up to his mouth, but tries to swallow it. He won't let this man's lousy attitude get to him again. He's better than this.

“Well, I for one would like to be able to sit outside,” he says decisively, moving to put the empty bowl and spoon into the dishwasher. “I'm gonna see what I can do.”

“Have fun.”

Zuko grits his teeth and mentally braces himself for a trip to the basement.

 

*

 

The garden refuses to yield without putting up a fight first, and for the first hour or so it seems like it might be winning.

Zuko is nothing if not stubborn, though, and, fortified with water bottles, the sun hot on his naked back, he works and works and works to pull out weed after weed with what his friends call his trademark “zukoness.” He doesn't mind that so much anymore, even if he's still not clear on what it means, but Sokka once compared it to the way Katara gets when she really wants to get her way and, well. Perhaps there's something to it. 

He only hopes _he_ isn't quite so scary.

Lieutenant Jee's gardening tools are poor weapons in this particular battle and Zuko isn't exactly the most experienced warrior when it comes to subduing potted plants and armies of wild dandelions, burning nettles or broadleaf plantains. Back in his family home they had legions of gardeners to maintain and guard the vast grounds around the mansions, and Uncle didn't have any place for a garden around the teashop in the middle of a city. 

Uncle often talked about the garden by his old house, though, Zuko thinks as he tries to cut through a particularly stubborn overgrowth. He thinks, with a dull ache in his heart, that Uncle should have one again.

He's going to get Uncle a garden, he decides right then and there. A new house with a proper backyard, or maybe just a patch in some kind of community garden, doesn't matter. Once this is all over, Uncle will get his bit of earth and spend as much time tending it as he damn well pleases. 

Zuko owes him that much, and so much more besides.

“You're doing it wrong.”

Zuko pauses, heavy pruning shears hopelessly stuck and blunting on an unyielding branch. He turns to wipe sweat off his brow and glares in the general direction of the glass garden doors, where he can just make out the tall, bulky figure of the Lieutenant in the high blinding sun.

“How the fuck am I doing it wrong?” he demands. 

“You'll only ruin the shears and I don't think the rest of that bush is coming.”

“Well excuse me, I wasn't aware there was a wrong way to cut stuff off,” Zuko snaps.

He can just about see Lieutenant Jee shrugging, sunlight glinting off a beer bottle in his hand. “I didn't either until I saw you,” the man says with infuriating amusement.

Zuko turns his back on him and crouches in the tall, tickling grass to try and wrestle the shears off the branch. _Ignore_ , he thinks, _just ignore..._

“You're covered in cuts,” the Lieutenant observes idly. The branch cracks as Zuko finally cuts clean through it, he's pressing on the shears so hard.

“I noticed,” he barks through gritted teeth.

“There's nettle burn on your hand.”

“You don't say.”

“You've got dirt all over you.”

“No shit.”

“You're really really bad at this.”

“And your point is?!” Zuko pulls himself back to his feet and shields his eyes from the sun with his hand so he can glare at the man properly. “If you're not gonna help, you might as well piss off, I'm trying to work!”

“ _Trying_ is a good way to put it,” the Lieutenant sasses. He regards Zuko for a long moment in silence, and Zuko is suddenly acutely aware of his own dirty bare chest when the man's dark eyes slide down and linger on it for a few seconds too long. 

He thinks he imagines the flash of interest that suddenly lights up the Lieutenant's eyes. It's difficult to see when the sun intently blazes a hole in his own, and he's not wearing his glasses, anyway. He fights the urge to cross his arms over his chest and resists the heat trying to push its way into his face.

He stands very still, irritated and defiant, when Lieutenant Jee finally deigns to make his way across the overgrown garden to him and holds out his hand for the shears.

“Get inside and wash your hand,” he tells Zuko, not unkindly. “There should be some vinegar in... somewhere.” 

“But – ”

“Go, kid, your Uncle won't thank me if you come back to him covered in stings.”

Zuko wants to argue more, but his hand _is_ bothering him something awful, and his therapist says there's a time and place for what she calls “misplaced pride.” Maybe this is one of those cases. Zuko slowly leaves the garden and heads for the bathroom to wash off the burn and the dirt, take a look at the cuts and reapply sunblock – he'd be burnt to a crisp by now without it, he's so pale.

And then he goes back to the garden to see the Lieutenant bent over the bush he'd been fighting with, pruning and swearing under his breath. 

Zuko stops in the treshhold. His eyes track patches of shade and sunlight shifting on the man's tense, muscled arms, tendons tight and beginning to glisten, shoulders broad and sculpted under the white dirty tank top. The vision freezes Zuko in his spot, and for a moment he just hangs there breathless and struck with a pang of desire as strong as it is unexpected. 

_Fuck_.

Once again he thinks of the photograph, then shakes his head like that could clear it of the unwanted thoughts. This is not the time. Definitely not the time _or_ the person, and his brain needs to... it just needs to stop. 

Still, when he makes his way over to watch as the Lieutenant's big strong hands handle the shears with surprising expertise, the pool of fierce want in his belly refuses to melt away, and he thinks every glance of those brown eyes to him and his half-naked body will scorch him from the inside out. 

Thankfully, he is distracted from it all as soon as they start arguing about the proper way to utilize the lawn mower, and the rush of exasperation and prickling anger gets him through the afternoon relatively unscathed. 

At night, though, he remembers again, and he turns in his bed violently but that doesn't stop his thoughts from relieving what he's seen, and...

He wonders.

 

*

 

He works on the garden for most of the next day too, and – surprise, surprise – Lieutenant Jee emerges from his cave, not only to criticize Zuko's not-so-green-ish thumb but to actually help. When they don't snap at each other they work silently, and by dinnertime the garden starts to look like something that actually deserves the name.

It wants flowers, though, and maybe something else, like fruit. Raspberries? Or artistically arranged stones, or maybe a tiny fountain. Zuko doesn't dare bring up a trip to Home Depot again, but resolves to scour the first Farmer's Market he can find. 

Just in case.

The Lieutenant surprises him further that evening, not only by ordering Chinese takeout for two after they're done - “You like chicken with rice, right?” – but also by offerring Zuko a bottle of beer, which, for once, he accepts.

“Uh, thanks,” he tries, fighting not to say something insulting about the man's alcohol-related habits again.

“Sure.” The man casually opens his bottle over the edge of the countertop and tries – rather pointedly – to not look at Zuko too much. “Aren't you putting your shirt back on?” he asks gruffly, sounding irrirated for some reason.

Zuko doesn't hide his confusion and, to be fair, the vague hurt. “Why, am I making you uncomfortable, Lieutenant?”

“Jesus, no,” the man mutters softly, which only confuses Zuko more. “Don't call me that, kid, I haven't been anyone's lieutenant in a long time. Just – just put a shirt on, all right? For me.”

“I didn't realize I was so difficult to look at,” Zuko murmurs, because it stings, it shouldn't but it fucking does. He moves to his bedroom to fish around for a t-shirt and the Lieutenant sighs behind him, and there's a distinct slap of hand hitting forehead. 

“It's not that,” the Lieutenant calls at him. “I just – fuck it, nevermind, you can parade around naked for all I care, only – ”

But Zuko isn't listening anymore. And that's mostly because when the cotton of the Star Trek t-shirt he got from Suki hits his back and shoulders, the instant burn on his skin shows him he has, after all, been sunburnt. 

“Fuck!” he hisses, pulling the t-shirt off over his head. 

“What is it?” the Lieutenant asks, and his voice sounds much closer now, like he's standing just by the door. “Kid?”

“Got any sun lotion?” Zuko calls back, gritting his teeth. 

There's a moment of silence. “Figured out you got sunburnt, did ya?”

“Why didn't you tell me?!”

“Let's just say I fancied a little payback for the cigarette stunt you pulled, you little punk,” the man admits easily, way too amused for Zuko's taste. “Hang on. I'll be right back.”

Zuko does hang on because what the fuck else is he supposed to do in this situation, and he tries to take a shower but that doesn't help a whole lot, and he cringes at the prospect of spending the entire night lying on his belly. The Lieutenant is back by the time he gets out of the bathroom, and though the last thing he might possibly want at the moment is talk to the man, the living room does lure him in with the delicious smell of takeout. 

When he sticks his head in he notices a promising bottle of soothing lotion sitting on the table. The Lieutenant is standing next to it and looking – dare he think it – almost apologetic.

“Come on,” he says, “I'm gonna rub that on you and then we'll eat.”

And Zuko is still mad at him. Madder than a bull trapped at a Communist rally. But then his unhelpful mind shows him a picture of the Lieutenant standing behind him and rubbing his big, big hands over Zuko's skin, and this makes it a bit easier to swallow his pride and _not_ tell the man to stick it where the sun don't shine. 

Not by much. But a bit.

He still finds it necessary to snark, “A human impulse, at last,” and takes grim satisfaction in the grimace that twists the man's face into something stern and resentful. When he sits down in one of the armchairs and leans forward on his knees, though, the hands that touch him aren't forceful like he'd been imagining – rather, they linger on his skin gently, almost like a question, like it's something the Lieutenant isn't quite sure he should do, or if he's allowed to.

Zuko keeps himself very still. The hands touching his are slow, slick with lotion, and they move in broad circles to rub as much of it in as possible, and his skin burns under this careful touch but it's not _just_ the pain and the want from yesterday stirs in his gut like that one stubborn cockroach that just refuses to die already. Those hands brim with latent strength and it – it excites him, this strength he can only guess at. It's only fingers at first, but soon Zuko can feel whole palms against the heated skin of his back, old scabs and hard callouses pressing in, and it's all too easy to imagine those same hands sliding over him in different circumstances, holding him, keeping him down, caressing...

 _For God's sake, get a grip._ A boner is the last thing he needs right now. Zuko firmly tells his inconvenient urges to kindly shut the fuck up and grits his teeth, and thinks, well, perhaps a bit of awkward small talk is in order to dispel that _other_ kind of awkwardness that is already bleeding into the air and charging it with static. 

He goes for the first thing that jumps at him. “So, uh, where do you work?”

What? He's never been a reputed conversationalist and it's hard to expect clever insightful questions from him when most of his attention is focused on keeping his own blood from going where he doesn't want it to go.

There's a sigh. The hands press a little closer, linger a little longer. “Insurance.”

“Well, that's...”

“Boring. You can say it, kid. It is.”

“I was gonna say stable,” Zuko protests, but then he lets his shoulders slump. “But boring, yes, that too. What happened?”

“I got discharged and I needed a job. That's pretty much the whole story.” 

The bitterness lacing the words shuts Zuko up better than any jab. He wouldn't know what it's like, anyway, and anything he could say now would sound hollow. For all the shit he's been through, he's never had to worry about where his next meal comes from, and the Lieutenant probably knows this. 

He sits quietly and lets the man finish, trying not to dwell on how good those hands feel on his back, and almost heaves a sigh of relief when it's done and the lotion is left to work its magic on him. “Thanks,” he manages. “I guess.”

But the Lieutenant is already moving, fishing out his cigarette packet and going out to smoke all over their hard work in the pink aura of the setting sun. Zuko watches him for a moment and has a discomfiting impression that the man's hands are shaking. 

The lotion cools on his back, along with the ghost of the man's hardened touch. He wonders if he should maybe go out, ask, say something.

His face burns, and he stays put. He turns to his food and starts eating the rice that's already going cold. It's not like he'd know what to say, anyway, and the Lieutenant's exit felt abrupt, like he was trying to put distance between Zuko and himself as fast as he could. Zuko's the first to admit he's shit at reading signals, but even he managed to catch that one. 

Much, much later, when he's lying on his stomach reading comics in bed, he hears the microwave going and bottles clinking. Half an hour later there's the bang of the doors closing.

Zuko tries to keep reading, but he's too distracted to focus on the dynamic action-packed panels and soon gives up entirely.

He wonders if he should call Uncle, or Mai, or anyone. 

He grits his teeth and pushes his face into the pillow. No. There's nothing to tell them. There _will_ be nothing to tell them. He's just being stupid, as always, and it's not his fault his stupid tastes are what they are. 

Still, it takes him a long time to finally surrender to uneasy sleep, and he doesn't hear the Lieutenant come back all through the night.

 

*

 

He spends the next day losing himself in the noise of New York City again, after his morning ritual of jogging and breakfast and meds. A shop selling different kinds of tea catches his eye; he goes in to buy some novelty kinds for Uncle to send through the post. After that, he figures his friends deserve something too, and the rest of the afternoon disappears in a flurry of scouting the West Village for the most appropriate postcards and little gifts for each of them. Writing short messages on the postcards steals the better part of his lunch, but eventually he sweats out something to put on each of them, and it's with an embarrassingly fluttery heart that he locates the nearest post office. He didn't have the foresight to ask for addresses, so he mails the lot to Uncle. He'll distribute the goods, Zuko has no doubt about that. 

After that, he eats his burger sitting in Tompkins Square Park and people-watching, and that would be the end of today's trip, only...

He wasn't going to visit the Stonewall Inn that day, or maybe at all. There's a voice in him that says he's probably not worthy, somehow; that the place is not his to contemplate. After all, he's been attracted to women – still is, when he has the time to think about it and notice them, and even now, even after talking about it to Uncle, after Jet, after furtive visits to certain websites and frantically cleaning his broswer history every single time, he's... 

He's standing in front of it, and stretching out his arm to take a picture with his phone. The small unassuming building, the red brick under faded white paint, the surprisingly modest neon sign in the window – and the Pride flag stretched big and challenging over one of the windows, with its tiny little copies dancing cheerfully on the wind where they're stuck into the iron bars.The big flag looks like a statement, like it's screaming _We are here and we're not leaving_ , but the little ones look almost happy, like a party after a big fight. 

Zuko captures it into his phone and stands there on the sidewalk, staring, but he doesn't have the courage to go in. The Pride flag over the entrance keeps him where he is. He's not proud, yet. Maybe he won't ever be. But he's trying, and coming to terms with the fact that he's maybe possibly bisexual took a long time, and he thinks the fact his feet carried him here eventually means something. 

It's... a step, at the very least, and he thinks, remembering another rainbow hanging on another wall, that he's... That he'd maybe like to know more. 

He still doesn't know if he has any right to feel like he can call this community his, but if he can, somehow, find out, he has a feeling it'd probably help in more ways than one.

“Not going in?” someone asks. 

Zuko turns. A tall black man, painfully handsome and smiling like he knows all of Zuko's dirty browser history by heart and could recite it back at him, stands next to him with his hands on his hips. His short hair has colorful streaks in it and his blue shirt clings to him, lovingly hugging tight muscle. Zuko swallows. His throat is drier than Texas at high noon all of a sudden, and his face is beginning to heat up.

“I... uh...”

The man claps him on the shoulder. “It's okay. Lot of people feel a bit shy at first.”

Suddenly, Zuko is seized with the absurd image his father's face would make if he ever saw Zuko standing there in front of an LGBT icon, talking to a man with rainbow in his hair and rakish charm in his smile, and that, more than anything, gives him the courage to say, “What makes you think this is my first time?”

The man laughs. Zuko feels he can breathe again, even though the sight of that beautiful face all lit up tugs at him hard and fast. He's blushing, he's dead sure of it, and oh God, if he could just teleport himself all the way to Michigan...

But he makes himself stay put, and when the man's eyes glisten with interest as they rake over him up and down, he tries his best to keep himself from flinching even though his insides do a clumsy carthweel that sends pleasant shivers all over his spine. 

_Be cool. Be cool. You can handle this. It's just a conversation. It's okay to have a conversation._

“How about we go in, then?” the man suggests easily. “I could show you the places that are actually interesting.”

“I – ” Zuko blinks, and for an exciting, _terrifying_ moment he really, really wants to say yes. To take up this thread and see where it leads, to find out if he has the guts to, if he too can have a go at the kind of life that seems to be on offer here and that only months ago seemed so completely out of his reach.

But then he looks at the flag again, and a familiar hand of fear and insecurity closes around his throat. He can't do it. Not yet. Not today.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, looking down at his trainers. “I don't... I don't think I'm...”

The hand reaches to his shoulder again, and the weight of it feels sympathetic. “It's all right,” the man assures him, his brilliant white teeth flashing in the sunlight. “I get it. Here.” He presses something into Zuko's hands – when he looks down he discovers it's a business card. “I'm a writer and I work at the Center in West Village. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center,” he explains politely. “If you ever think you'd like a tour of the Village, give me a call. Or you can drop by the Center and ask for Tyrone.”

“Zuko,” Zuko says gratefully, pocketing the card and extending a hand that he's probably holding a bit too stiffly. “Thanks.”

“Anytime. See you around.” Tyrone grants him another bright smile as he gives Zuko's hand a firm shake, and then he disappears into the Inn, calling a loud, cheerful greeting to someone he must have found inside. 

And now Zuko can't just keep standing there looking like an idiot, so he forces himself to move with the burn of Tyrone's confident hand against his, and maybe he regrets saying no just a little. But then on the subway, his thoughts turn from that open, honest, dashing face to dirt-streaked naked shoulders flexing in the sunlight, and the skin on his back tingles helpfully in reminder as he groans and hides his face in his hands, probably scaring the little old lady sitting next to him. 

This can't be happening. _This canNOT be happening._

Still, though, there's at least one thing to take out of all this. He kind of really wants to ask the Lieutenant about his Pride flag now, and about the golden man on the golden beach, and maybe even casually come out and ask for bar recs. Even if only to see his face, or – yeah, that one's undeniable – because he knows _exactly_ how his father would react to it, and that familiar cocktail of fear and anxiety and anger and defiance at the thought only spurs him on.

And maybe that's not exactly healthy. So what. Nothing about his relationship with his father is healthy, and even admitting it to himself means he's gotten further than he ever hoped he would. 

Later that evening he sends the picture of the Stonewall to Aang and Katara, knowing they especially will appreciate it, and, after a few minutes of hesitation, to Uncle. Almost immediately the last one gives him a call, and Zuko's hand may be shaking a little bit but he smiles through a fresh sheen of tears when the first thing Uncle says is, “I am so proud of you, nephew.”

The corner spider watches him from its comfortable nest when he finally goes to bed, and spontaneously Zuko decides its name is Terry. 

“I'm gonna do it tomorrow,” he tells it quietly. “I'm gonna ask him.”

Terry the spider, predictably, says nothing. Zuko chooses to interpret the silence as endorsement.

That night he lies on his stomach and dreams of flags and warm smiles, and cigarette smoke, and big, strong hands sliding down his back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, [JERK-BENDING](http://jerk-bending.tumblr.com)!!! *throws confetti, distributes party hats for everyone, pops champagne* Hope you have a lovely day and I am so sorry this is the only gift I have for you. 
> 
> Second of all, this fic is three parts now instead of two because my self-discipline skills are severely lacking. I still haven't gotten around to editing part 1 properly either. I am a terrible ficcer. *goes to sit in the corner of shame*
> 
> Usual warnings apply, with some extra ones about sexist slurs and mentions of animal abuse. I want to extend special thanks to the lovely [Cherepashka](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherepashka/pseuds/Cherepashka) for her hints about where to go for the best food in New York. <3

Tomorrow comes and goes, and Zuko doesn't ask.

It's not his fault. You can't ask a person anything when the person isn't there to be asked. The Lieutenant doesn't show his face anywhere in the house for the entire day, then – as far as Zuko knows – the entire night, and Zuko tries not to take it personally but he sort of does anyway.

The second day is much the same. So is the third.

On the fourth day he finds the Lieutenant passed out in his favorite chair again, and spends the rest of the night in his room doing a piss-poor job of pretending it doesn't bother him. 

On the fifth day he smells cigarette smoke from the Lieutenant's bedroom, but no one answers when he asks if he should get Thai or Indian, and something already tightly wound in Zuko's mind films over bright red. 

On the sixth day the red sharpens and he feels maybe he's better off not asking at all. Coasting on impulses most of which he can recognize are ugly, he unearths the little white cardboard square from the backpocket of his jeans and stares at Tyrone's number until his eyes go dry.

He throws the card on the bed fifteen minutes later, the phone gone blank, the house still and quiet around him while his head is anything but. Who the fuck is he kidding? He won't do it. He's not going to string along a kind stranger on the offchance that something he doesn't even really want might _maybe possibly_ happen, and he's not sure he's ready to make any new friends either, not with the way he remembers Tyrone was looking at him. It wouldn't be fair, especially since...

It just wouldn't be fair.

But he can't function in this weird stalemate much longer either, especially when he has no fucking idea what he's done to drive the Lieutenant away. They seemed to be getting somewhere after the dinner and the gardening, and now it's like none of that happened and maybe that's good for those budding urges Zuko knows he shouldn't indulge, but the Lieutenant is all of a sudden acting like he can't stand the very sight of him, and Zuko will damn well find out why if it kills him. 

So when, on that very same sixth day, he hears the Lieutenant drag himself into the house – _finally_ – he doesn't wait for the ritual boozing to start. Instead, he grabs his laptop and the charger, carries them into the living room, and promptly makes a beeline for the Lieutenant's favorite chair.

He only has to wait a few seconds for the results. 

“Kid,” the Lieutenant says when he pulls away from the fridge and fixes him with a dark, dark glare. “What the _fuck_.”

“The outlet in my room is busted,” Zuko explains, “and my battery's almost out.”

“And that requires you to sit in _my_ chair how?”

Zuko points. “It's closer to the outlet.” _And maybe you'll have a harder time drinking yourself into unconsciousness in the other one._ The other armchair is much smaller, for one thing, and – Zuko discovers – not nearly as comfortable as this one, even with the cigarette burn in the soft worn upholstery on the right armrest. He might just usurp this one permanently.

For a moment the Lieutenant makes the very face Ozai used to make whenever Zuko opened his mouth at social events. Then, his eyebrows slumping into a defeated line, he grabs a bottle of Scotch and makes for his own bedroom, and Zuko has a cold feeling that if he lets the guy go now he won't likely ever develop a civil relationship with him for as long as he's here. So he seizes the hot impulse and blurts, “Is the dog in the picture yours?”

He immediately wishes he'd just kept his mouth shut. But it's done now, and the goal, such as it was, is achieved – the Lieutenant stops dead in the threshold with a jerk so abrupt he looks like someone just put a gun to his head.

“Was,” he whispers after a moment. He hasn't turned around. “Leave off, kid, I'm tired.”

“It's just a question,” Zuko says, and feels himself bristle even though he can't help remembering how he felt when he was ten and arrived at the garden pond one evening to find all the ducks gone. Or the time Azula let Nala off her leash in the middle of South Beach and did nothing to call her back and laughed when Nala chased a pigeon straight into the traffic. 

He shivers and curls his legs under himself in the big chair, feeling cold. 

“Got any more of those or can I go drink in peace?” The Lieutenant asks, and his tone, along with the memory, hardens something in Zuko enough to ask:

“Who's the man on the beach?” 

“That,” the Lieutenant grates, “is none of your goddamn business. Stop snooping.”

“I wasn't! He's right there in the photographs. I can't help but look at them when I'm here.”

“Then don't be here.”

“That's stupid.”

“I'm not getting into this with you tonight.”

“Was he your boyfriend?” Zuko presses, feeling the familiar stubbornness rise in him like smoke off an active volcano, and from the stiff upward tilt to the Lieutenant's shoulders he knows he's guessed right. 

“Whatever,” the Lieutenant says, the words gravelly and soft. “It's not a fun bedtime story and it's _mine_ and if you have a problem with that you can just – ”

“So he was.” Zuko’s heart feels tight with thrill and nerves in equal amounts. “I was curious, because, you see,” and the rest of the sentence rushes out of him in a single furious heartbeat, “I kind of had a boyfriend too.”

 _That_ compels the man to finally look at him, and at first his expression is so similar to the one Uncle wore when Zuko first came out that Zuko's breath stutters in his throat and dries as though he's swallowed a handful of sand. The expression doesn't soften. If anything, the Lieutenant's face freezes in this state of half-shock and half-anger, and gradually tightens into the anger side of the spectrum, which is much, much worse. Zuko holds his glare and waits, though suddenly the last thing he wants is to stay.

“ _Kind of_?” the man parrots hoarsely. 

“Well, yeah.” Zuko sticks his chin out, skin prickling. “It was complicated. But I thought we might – ”

“You gonna talk to me about experimenting?”

“ _No_ ,” Zuko snaps. “It's nothing like that. I only wanted to talk, to ask – ”

“Not in the mood,” the Lieutenant says, brusque and final. He's about to turn away again and Zuko has _had_ it.

He jumps out of the armchair and demands, “What is _wrong_ with you?! I was only trying to talk!”

“And I'm telling you I'm not in the mood!”

“But if you’d just – ”

“Want to talk? Fine. Let's talk. Do you know what I had to do this morning?” The Lieutenant rounds on him and his knuckles tighten on the bottle like he's struggling not to throw it. “I had to tell a little old lady that she wouldn't get her damages money based on a fucking loophole she couldn't have caught because she doesn't have a law degree. I had to sit there and fill out form after form rejecting people's claims or I'd get the sack. My boss yelled at me for taking too long on my piss break. And then some fucking asshole ranted at me for half an hour because he was an idiot who couldn't pass reading comprehension to save his life. And that's not even counting – ” He breaks off as though he'd been stung, and presses his eyes closed like looking at Zuko is suddenly too much to take. The stark yellow light of the living room lamp spills over his face, shading it into hard lines and hollow bruises, and the bags under his eyes stand out in sallow green and grey. 

Zuko stands there, waiting, and feels both small and too big for his own skin. He wishes he hadn't said anything. He wishes he could say more. The Lieutenant opens his eyes and fixes him with a look that's tired to the very bones, and Zuko swallows, fingers digging into the upholstery.

“If it's mentors you want,” Lieutenant Jee whispers in a voice that scratches like nails on a blackboard, “you've come to the wrong place. I’m sorry, but I can't help you. You don't want to waste your time on someone like me.”

“How about,” Zuko manages, “I make that choice for myself?”

The Lieutenant shakes his head. His lips curl; Zuko can't tell if it's supposed to be a smirk or something else entirely.

“Why are you avoiding me?” Zuko asks, quietly. 

The Lieutenant shakes his head again. “Kid – ”

“Don't call me that. I'm an adult. I can make my own choices.” 

“You're not even allowed to drink yet.”

“That's because the law is dumb,” Zuko insists. “But I can do... other things,” he finishes, feeling his face flame up and snapping his mouth firmly shut before something else can slip past it.

Warm hands on his back, he remembers. Muscles he could cling to, and which could probably hold him up easily if they tried. A hot bolt of lightning zigzags through his stomach and he imagines a creaky bed, and a hoarse voice in his ear, and a big, hard cock – 

He wrings his hands together, looking away at the ugly brown carpet, and prays that his thoughts are not, contrary to what it feels like, written in blazing font right there on his forehead. 

“I'm not a kid,” is what he says in the end. 

There is silence.

And then, without a word, the Lieutenant finally turns away for the last time and drags himself to his bedroom. This time, Zuko doesn't stop him.

He curls up in the big chair and stays there, and knows with stone-cold certainty he won't be able to sleep tonight.

 

***

 

The next day, he texts Katara. It's probably a mistake, not least because he always finds it impossible _not_ to spill everything to her when she deploys her artillery of concerned tones and guilt-tripping silences and long-suffering sighs on him, but then again, he suspects that was the main reason for summoning her in the first place. He needs to talk to someone. And as much as he loves his Uncle, just – no. 

Katara is easy to talk to. She just has this – _way_ about her, the way she listens and focuses on you and actually pays attention, and it used to freak him the hell out before but he's learning to appreciate it. 

At any rate, he appreciates it now, sitting by the river with the wind let loose in his hair, waiting for her reaction. He gives her time. He supposes that randomly confessing through text that he finds his grumpy drunk roommate, who happens to be twice is age, really quite attractive might require a bit of a moment to wrap her head around.

She calls him within five minutes. 

“Okay,” she says, “that's not at all how I expected this situation to develop.”

Zuko barks a bittersweet laugh, watching the distant shape of the Statue of Liberty rising from the mists. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“No, no, it's just... Well, frankly I thought Sokka was saying all that about grown men just to annoy you. I didn't realize – ”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. And is it like, a _crush_ -crush, or...?”

Zuko sighs. “I don't know. He's just – he's pretty hot, and it's distracting, and I don't know what to do.”

“Have you talked to Sokka?”

“God no.”

“Good. He'll be crushed. He was hoping you'd become his fishing buddy, you know, of the Brokeback sort.”

“Katara.”

“Sorry,” she lilts, light and amused and not sorry at all, “but his brocrush on you is too hilarious sometimes. It's okay though, I'm sure he'll get over it. Now. Are you okay?”

Zuko chews on his bottom lip. “I guess? It's just – confusing, and I don't know... I'm not sure if... It's confusing.”

“Well, do you think he might like you back?”

Ha. “Probably not. He's been avoiding me all week and we had a fight last night and I think he might actually hate me.”

“Oh.” She is quiet for a few moments, and so is Zuko, sitting there in stark sunshine and tracing a single seagull's progress across the bay. “I guess you won't know for sure until you ask?”

“Ask him to go out with me?” Zuko leans forward and hunches his shoulders as the contents of his stomach rearrange themselves noisily. “I don't know, Katara, he's... I don't even know if I actually want to start anything with him or if it's temporary, or...”

“Look, it doesn't have to be a date,” Katara suggests gently. “Just get him out of the house. From what it sounds like it's not a very good environment for either of you. Get him out, take him somewhere, find some kind of excuse, even just to, I don’t know, go grocery shopping... Anything, and then maybe you'll get more clues and decide for yourself what you want to do. See what he can be like for yourself, and check if he really does hate you, which I honestly doubt.”

“Why would you doubt it?”

“Because I know you, you dork,” she says warmly. “You're very lovable. He's bound to have seen at least glimpses of that during those weeks you've been with him.”

“You used to hate me,” Zuko reminds her quietly, swallowing over the dry patch in his throat and pushing it down to his tight knotted stomach. 

“That's different. I didn't know you as I do now because you wouldn't let me, or anyone. You're not like that anymore and anyway, I didn't _hate_ you, Zuko.”

Zuko manages a smile. “You just thought I was a jerk.”

“Well, you _were_ ,” she points out lightly. “Though not a total jerk, even then. I’d say jerk level 6 out of 10. So it matters even more that you're no longer one. Most of the time.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought, haven’t you.”

“Oh really?” Katara laughs, though the sound has a sharp edge to it. “You wanna go there? Zuko, I am a brown Native _girl_ studying to be a doctor. If I got a dollar every time I met a jerk I wouldn’t have to worry about student loans.”

“I know,” Zuko says quickly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t — I mean —”

“It’s okay.” She sounds soft again, and Zuko can hear the smile in her voice. “I know you’ve had your fill of jerks too.”

And Zuko’s smile turns bitter at that, because he knows _exactly_ which of their few mutual “friends” Katara means. “So where is _he_ on your scale?”

“He is a scale of his own.”

Zuko can only chuckle his agreement. Considering everything that went down, it’s progress. 

“Anyway, as I was saying —” She pauses, then shouts “Okay!” at someone that presumably isn't Zuko, and turns back to him to say, “Gran-Gran and Dad say hi. He's back from DC now and discovering it's not as easy as he thought to make lasagna from scratch.”

“How was DC?” Zuko asks, knowing how much Hakoda's crusades mean to the entire family. “Did he manage to see anyone?”

“Oh, he saw people all right,” Katara says darkly, in that tone she has right before she launches herself into righteous rage. “Mostly the backs of their heads as they ran for the hills as soon as they saw him. And the ones who did deign to talk to him were even worse. He managed to set up a meeting with Senator Jade, and _he_ had the audacity to say we should be able to find solutions on our own, can you imagine that?!”

Sadly, Zuko can. He doesn't say so, but settles in with a grim face to listen to the angry and impassioned tirade about corporate stupidity and cruelty and water pollution and dams and government neglect he knows almost by heart by now, not that that makes it any less painful to hear. Hakoda and his organization are doing their best to fight the water pollution that killed his wife, but it takes more than that to make actual change and sadly, environmental concerns in Native reserves aren't exactly a hot button issue at the moment. 

To distract Katara, he asks after Aang and how their budding relationship is going, and _hmmmms_ and _yeahs_ through much softer, more stuttery explanations which turn his smile brighter and his body warmer. He's happy for them, even if Katara still isn't sure about the whole thing, because it's clear as day they're best friends already and if all else fails they'll always have that. Zuko thinks of Mai, and misses her. 

He wonders if she'd be up for a visit to New York. 

As if on cue, after a spell of comfortable silence, Katara asks, “Hey, do you want me to come over? Or any of us? I could definitely haggle for a weekend off.” 

Zuko's heart aches in the best possible way. “Thank you,” he says earnestly, “but I wouldn't dream of pulling you away from your dad now that he's home again.”

“It won't be for long,” Katara says with the kind of resigned sadness she usually displays when the topic is broached. “He's leaving again in two weeks.”

“So soon?”

“Yeah.” She sighs, soft and tired. “I know it's inevitable and he's doing very important work, but...”

“I know,” Zuko assures her quietly. “Enjoy your time together.” 

“And you be careful. I hope everything works out for you, but these kind of relationships are... tricky, even at the best of times, and he _is_ so much older than you, and from what you said he's got problems I'm not sure he can deal with, and the last thing you need is to get hurt. It just, it may not be worth it.”

Zuko presses fingers to the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes against the sun. “I know,” he whispers. “I think that's precisely the problem.”

“Take care of yourself first, okay?”

“I'll try. You, too.”

“Oh, don't worry about me,” Katara assures him, some of the amusement coloring her tone into lighter hues. “I have such a backlog in TV shows you wouldn't believe. They're gonna have to pry my cold dead body from Netflix once this dumb internship is over.” 

Zuko grins. He's already looking forward to their arguments over _Daredevil_ and the new season of _Orange is the New Black_ , and he tells her so, which, gratifyingly, makes her laugh. He is still amazed he can say things that make his friends laugh, with genuine humor rather than derision. Suddenly the day is looking brighter, and when he looks out over the water again it snatches the sunlight to cast it back in a thousand arresting glitters. 

“Thank you,” he says, and hopes she knows how much he means it. “Say hi to the others. I'll talk to you later.”

“Shall I pass on the news to Sokka or do you want to break his heart yourself?”

“I'll do it myself. If all else fails, we'll go on that fishing trip.”

“You player,” Katara says, warmly. “Good luck.”

Zuko doesn't leave the bench after they hang up, and instead watches the play of sunlight on the murky waters of the Hudson. Pigeons hop about at his feet, chirping demandingly, and a few determined joggers pass him with headphones on, but other than that the spot is quiet and perfect for a session of decided plotting.

By the end of it he has the vague contours of a plan, which is not much but still more than he had when he started off, and he spends about half an hour googling garden plants. 

He's never been very good at leaving things alone.

 

*

 

“We're going out,” Zuko announces on Saturday morning over cereal. 

“Who's we?” the Lieutenant asks. He's only eaten half of his eggs – the rest is a sad mess of white and yellow going cold on his plate. 

“You and me. We're going out.”

The Lieutenant looks at him. Then he looks at his massacred eggs. “No.”

“Yes,” Zuko corrects him. “We're going out to get some flower seeds and plants and then we're eating out and then you're gonna help me plant them.”

“ _No._ ”

Zuko sighs. He finishes his cereal first, then pushes the bowl away, crosses his arms over the counter and bestows on the Lieutenant the expression Mai once called The Essence of Xi,” hoping it'll work as well now as it used to on his nannies. 

“Look, you don't have anything better to do anyway,” he points out, “and besides, you owe me.”

“I do?” The Lieutenant gives him a skeptical eyebrow.

“Yeah, you do.” Zuko lets his voice harden as he leans forward and captures the man's dark brown eyes, to hold them the way he saw his father do so many times during negotiations. “I'm not gonna go into specifics because frankly I don't want to fight but you can probably figure out what I mean.”

And the thing is, Zuko doesn't really expect this outrageous gamble to work, but maybe _acting_ like he does is enough. The Lieutenant doesn't look away from him for a good long while, his eyes clearing somewhat and gleaming oddly as they try to stay on Zuko's healthy eye and stray to the left one anyway; and though his face settles on something that Zuko can't decipher, eventually he sighs and slumps back on his stool and runs a hand over his unkempt gray hair. 

“No eating out,” he posits. “We come straight back here.”

“We eat out,” Zuko counters, “and I don't ask you for your opinions in the store.”

“You plant your shit yourself.”

“Fine.”

The Lieutenant gives him a resigned look and asks, “Do you always get what you want, kid?”

“No,” Zuko answers honestly, “but I learned from the best. Don't call me kid.”

“Don't call me Lieutenant.”

Zuko extends his hand over the table, and the Lieu – and Jee, reluctantly, shakes it. His hand is warm like Zuko remembers, and barely closes over Zuko's like it's afraid of a proper touch; but he still has a feeling they both hold on a little longer than they can justify.

 

***

 

“What _do_ you want me to call you?” Zuko asks when they inch along the shelves at Home Depot, him in the lead and Jee grudgingly trailing behind like a cranky five-year-old eager to make a run for the toy store. 

“Just Jee. That's what everyone else calls me.”

“But isn't that your last name?”

“Yeah. So?”

Zuko shrugs. “Seems a bit weird.”

“Got used to it a long time ago. Only my family calls me by my first name and no, I'm not telling you what it is.”

Zuko rolls his eyes and picks up a bag of forget-me-not seeds. He thinks they’d look nice by the doors to the garden, or maybe the morning-glories? He dumps both bags into the cart, just in case. Behind him there's a groan, which he ignores as he examines the other bags and flower beds on display. Nasturtiums, peonies, zinnians, violets, asters, irises – after a moment's thought he grabs them all, and anything else he likes the look of. If he's gonna work, might as well make it interesting. 

“What did you use to have in your garden?” he asks idly, making steady progress until he has a cart full of color. 

Behind him, Jee sighs. “Hell if I know. Tim was the one with the green thumb and he — shit.”

 _Aha_ , Zuko thinks, his heart suddenly trying to beat its way out of his chest. “Is Tim the man on the beach?” he asks.

The explosive sigh tells him that yes, he is. Zuko tries not to turn and simply proceeds along the aisle, waiting and struggling to ignore the drumming of blood in his ears. 

“Yeah,” Jee finally confirms. “Don’t be so smug about it.”

“I’m not smug.”

Jee snorts. He doesn’t follow it up with a comment. 

“He still around?” Zuko asks, with such fake nonchalance he cringes immediately, but luckily Jee is still behind him and can’t see.

“No. We broke up.”

“But you lived together?”

“Obviously.” Jee takes a moment to shadow Zuko along the aisle in silence, and then he adds, softly and with an air of defeat, “He insisted on that damned garden. I told him I didn’t have a knack for it but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Was that a long time ago?” Zuko asks quietly, feeling altogether too flighty and fragile all of a sudden. 

“Yeah.” Jee sighs again, then pushes past Zuko roughly to gaze at the seed bags as though they have personally offended him. “He liked tulips,” he murmurs under his breath. 

Zuko nods. He glances into his cart, where no tulip bulbs are in evidence, and then back at Jee. “Do _you_ want tulips?” he asks.

Jee shakes his head. Zuko’s heart constricts and then releases abruptly, and it’s a bit like changing from the tight, oppressive formal tux back into his comfy woolen pajamas at the end of a dreadfully long social function back home, only not as relieving, as though he’d been forced to keep the bowtie tight and scratching at his neck. “My ex didn’t like plants at all,” he confesses, hoping for God knows what. “He was all about things growing in the wild. Bit of a hippie, actually.”

Jee doesn’t comment. He does look at Zuko though, long and considering like he’s trying to puzzle him out, and then turns that lingering look on the seeds again. He points to a bunch of asters, star-shaped and soothingly colored from violet to purple to pink and red, and says, “These are all right.”

Zuko smiles. He picks up the flowers and admits that “Yeah, they are,” then places them carefully into the cart.

Eyes dark and face inscrutable, Jee watches him for another moment, then turns and ambles away. 

Zuko’s smile lingers as he follows, and _now_ it feels like the bowtie, too, is gone.

 

***

 

They don’t drive to any old fastfood on the way home, like Zuko’s been expecting. Instead, Jee takes them deep into Queens, an area Zuko has never been to in all the years he spent thinking he knew New York, and suddenly he is reduced to wide-eyed wonder as they enter a neighborhood much bigger, much more vibrant, much more _organic_ than the Chinatown he’s familiar with. 

“Flushing,” Jee explains, and a faint, barely-there note of amusement, maybe even pride, drops into his voice. “This is where the best food’s at.”

“Oh yeah?” Zuko asks, craning his neck to read the signs over the shops and — yes — more diners and various other eateries than he can count. 

“Yeah. Wouldn’t expect a rich kid like you to know about it.”

“Shut up,” Zuko says mildly. 

He’s actually impressed, and even more so when Jee leads him into one of those warm, inviting places and orders for him what has to be, arguably, _the_ single best wonton noodle soup he’s ever eaten. Jee’s eyes stray to him as they eat — he knows, he can feel them like random raindrops falling on his face when the sky is clear — and when Zuko sneaks glances of his own, he finds that the man in front of him looks softer, clearer, _smoother_ than he’s ever seen him. 

Well. Apart from the photograph. Zuko’s stomach lurches, and he gazes decidedly into his bowl. 

“Do you like it?” Jee asks him.

Zuko sits back in his chair and looks up at him again. “That was _amazing_ ,” he breathes, and watches as Jee’s face loses some of its tight, pinched anticipation, like he wasn’t sure bringing Zuko here was a good idea at all. He sits back now, too, and one corner of his mouth tugs up in a smile that, for once, doesn’t look cynical. 

“Best in New York,” he says, looking oddly wistful. “You won’t find food like that in Manhattan.”

 _He’s proud,_ Zuko realizes. _He wanted to share this with me. He wanted me to like it._ The thought sits in the back of his throat like a bit of food he didn’t manage to chew properly, and it’s giving him all sorts of weird feelings, so he does the only thing he thinks he can do — he hides behind banter. “Yeah, yeah, spoiled little rich kid, I know,” he says, hoping it sounds glib. “I’m still putting the fern in the living room.”

“There will be no fern.”

“It’ll look glorious next to the TV.”

“There will _be_ no _fern_. You can keep it in your own room and then take it with you when you leave. No. Fern.”

Zuko only grins and lets Jee pay for the meal.

 

***

 

There is fern. It does look glorious next to the TV.

Sadly, that’s all Zuko manages to accomplish that day because the sky rips open on their way back and rain chases them into the house with heavy drops the wind seems to shepherd straight into their faces. Gardening will have to be postponed. Zuko finds himself wishing it would keep raining all night — wet ground should be easier to dig in. 

It’s odd to realize he’s actually looking forward to it. 

He doesn’t retreat into his own bedroom for the evening, and, oddly, neither does Jee. The guy gives off a restless vibe as he sits there in the other chair — Zuko was quicker commandeering the comfy one — and stares at the boring-ass baseball game on TV and takes automatic sips of his whiskey. He doesn’t try to smoke inside, though, and doesn’t even go out into the garden to do it. Zuko wonders if the rain scared him off. He wouldn’t want to smoke in this weather either.

He tries to focus on _League of Legends_ because to lose against Sokka now would just be embarrassing, but that restless vibe he’s intercepting is screwing up his concentration and when he gets killed off _again_ , by some clueless newbie on his own team no less, he groans and calls it quits for the night. _Sorry_ , he types at Sokka, _distracted_. 

_you just don’t wanna admit youre shit at lol_ , Sokka types back. Zuko reminds him that he usually beats Sokka eight games out of ten and _that_ prompts Sokka to remind him of his crushing defeat at Mario Kart, and it’s the usual easy back-and-forth over who pwns who at what game which Zuko can carry out in his sleep at this point; but even that doesn’t distract him from the thing that distracted him in the first place. 

“Are you even watching that?” he asks, pointing at the TV and ignoring Sokka’s tirade about how The Sims is not even a real game. 

Jee grunts. It sounds like a dog trying to bark in its sleep. His hand hovers over the empty whiskey glass, but he doesn’t get up to refill it. 

Zuko sighs and closes his laptop. He stands up and snatches the remote off the armrest near Jee’s unprotesting arm. The channels flip one by one in a blur of color and hilariously cut-off sound as he breezes through them to see if there’s anything on that _won’t_ put them to sleep, then turns the thing off altogether. The background noise is only making it worse.

“Listen,” he turns to Jee, “do you have Monopoly?” 

“What?” 

“Monopoly,” Zuko grinds out, “the game. Got it?”

Jee looks up at him with alarm. “If I say yes,” he asks like a man in a horror movie who’s about to be made to enter a dark room where something just definitely screeched, “will you make me play it?”

“Yup.” Zuko crosses his arms over his chest and fixes Jee with the most persuasive look he can put on. “We’re both bored out of our minds. Where is it?”

“We already want to kill each other,” Jee points out. “We don’t need any more encouragement.”

“At least we’ll be feeling _something_ ,” Zuko argues. Something odd flashes in Jee’s eyes that makes him regret his choice of phrase, but he sticks by it and grabs the empty whiskey glass. “Come on. Can’t be worse than watching baseball.”

He’s pleased to see that Jee apparently isn’t inclined to contest that. “The basement,” he murmurs, looking extremely put-upon. “If you can find it you’re a better man than I am.”

Zuko smirks. He’s always loved a challenge. “Be ready to eat those words,” he tells Jee as he descends into the stinky, oppressive dank void of the basement, “I’m not coming out until I find it.”

“Why am I actually willing to believe that,” he hears, and grins to himself in the darkness. 

He does find Monopoly. It takes a general overhaul of the entire basement to do it, and the patina of dust collected on every fucking surface sends him into a violent bout of sneezing, but he does. He also finds Guess Who, Operation, Cluedo and a chess set, and wonders if the mysterious Tim was a fan of board games. Or maybe those were meant for the little girl he saw in some of the pictures? If so, she obviously hasn’t visited in a long time. Zuko blows on the boxes and swipes an energetic hand over them to banish the worst of the dust, then hauls them upstairs, vowing to come back and see what else he can liberate from the confines of dusty cardboard. If Aang were here he’d call it a treasure hunt and insist they should all wear flashlights on their heads like they do in the movies.

And worst of all, they all probably _would_. If there is a person in this world who could resist Aang for any extended period of time when Aang really set his mind on something, Zuko hasn’t met them yet. 

… Okay, Azula and father probably could. But Azula was able to look into Nala’s literal puppy eyes and then kick her, and father is — well, father. They don’t count.

“This is going to be a disaster,” Jee predicts glumly, like someone standing in the hold of a ship watching water pour in from a hole in the hull. He nevertheless fills Zuko’s glass with something strong and amber-colored that makes Zuko’s tongue shrivel up, and lets Zuko unpack the Monopoly stuff on the floor by the TV. 

Then they play. It is a disaster. Zuko has no choice but to concede as much after hours of yelling and accusations of cheating and frustrated door-slamming, and his vision tilts, and he may be _slightly_ drunk but mostly he’s just outraged by that move Jee tried to pull to steal all of Zuko’s hotels. So outraged is he, in fact, that he is compelled to rant about the gross injustice to Terry the Spider, who listens sympathetically in its corner until Zuko is all ranted out. _What a good listener_ , Zuko thinks, and yyyyyeah, maybe more than slightly drunk after all. The room keeps on tilting like he’s out at sea even when his head finally hits the pillow, and he’s still so riled up he needs to listen to an hour of piano Disney music just to calm himself down enough to fall asleep. 

He’s still bitter about the cheating in the morning. Nevermind that he cheated too. 

There’s hangover pills on the table and a glass of water ready to be downed, though, and Jee…

Jee appears to be making French toasts.

“I don’t need the pills,” Zuko informs him from the safety of the doorway. “I’m not hungover.”

“Lucky bastard,” Jee murmurs. “Sit your cheating ass down, we’re having breakfast.”

“You know, that’s gotta be the first time I’ve seen you cook,” Zuko observes with some curiosity, choosing to let the _cheating ass_ remark slide for now. 

“Well, don’t get used to it,” Jee grumbles, grabbing a plate and depositing on it two crispy-golden toasts with perfectly brown crusts. “Here. And not another word about last night.”

“Got it,” Zuko promises, grabbing the bottle of maple syrup. “You cheated more than I did, though,” he adds under his breath.

“Jesus.” Jee serves himself two pieces of toasts and sits across from Zuko. “Tonight we’re playing Operation or get the fuck out. It’s impossible to cheat at that one.”

“You’re only saying that because you haven’t seen my sister play,” Zuko says darkly, choosing not to comment on Jee’s apparent assumption that they’ll be playing anything. It’s a correct one; Zuko simply expected he’ll need to plead and cajole and low-key threaten Jee into it again. 

“ _My_ sister used to cheat at Guess Who,” Jee volunteers after a moment. “Bitch,” he adds fondly.

“Which one is she?” Zuko asks, twisting on his stool to gaze at the photographs again.

Jee sighs. “Eat your toast. You’ve got some useless gardening to do today, don’t you?”

Ah. Yes. Zuko looks out into the garden, where the grass still gleams with pearls of dew in the stark, fresh sunshine, and then glances at the fern over the TV and at the seeds and flowers waiting patiently for his attention. His fingers itch, and he remembers a flash of a morning much like this one a long, long time ago, at Uncle’s old house, his fingers streaked with dirt and Lu Ten leaning over him teaching him how best to dig to make enough room for the roots to take. 

He smiles at the memory, and it tastes like salt. He wonders what Lu Ten would say if he could see him now.

Then he takes his meds, and doesn’t miss the way Jee watches him as he does. Jee wants to ask him about it, there’s no doubt there, but Zuko says nothing and doesn’t meet his eyes. If the guy wants to know, let him ask — Zuko won’t be volunteering anything on his own. Taking the pills in front of him is hard enough. He can think of only a few things less appealing than the prospect of sharing his personal history of fuckups with Jee. 

Without another word, he slides off the stool and gets ready for the day. Jee leaves him to it. 

When Zuko comes back to the kitchen to do the dishes he finds them already washed and stacked on the rack to dry, and smiles.

 

***

 

He’s changed his mind. He _doesn’t_ wonder what Lu Ten would say if he could see him now. 

Because Zuko has no idea what the fuck he’s doing.

 _Should’ve agreed to help Uncle whenever he got one of his gardening phases back at the teashop,_ he thinks, wiping hair away from his forehead and effectively streaking dirt all over his face once again. The dirt, wet from the rain, _is_ easier to dig in, and the fresh earthy smell stirred up by Zuko’s fingers tastes both pleasant and bittersweet from the memories it triggers, but that’s about all that could be said for his efforts. The flowers he does manage to replant look too small and forlorn in their little patches, the ground around them bared and uneven. Only the asters seem to hold their own in their little corner by the fence, fragile but colorful and proud — a bit like a rainbow flag, actually, and Zuko can’t help but smile at the thought. He really likes the asters.

Everything else, though, well… 

He just needs more practice.

And maybe a solid few hours with Google.

And a shower. That comes first.

He’s just about to hide in the blessedly sunless, blessedly air-conditioned house when Jee suddenly steps out bearing two tall glasses of lemonade, and he hands one over to Zuko without a word. Zuko is too thirsty to verbalize his gratitude, and for a moment they both just stand there in the sunlight drinking — or, in Zuko’s case, gulping — the lemonade and surveying the regrettable results of Zuko’s hard work.

“Well,” Jee tries after a moment.

“Fucking don’t,” Zuko tells him. “I’ll get better at this.”

“How?”

“I just will.”

Jee shrugs and leans a shoulder against the frame of the glass door. “Stubborn bastard.”

Zuko downs the last of the lemonade and then smirks. “You have no idea.”


End file.
